Altoona, PA Horseshoe Curve Train Wreck, Feb 1947 - Other Victims

Submitted by Edna Schlauch

Twenty one persons were killed instantly in the wreck and the 22nd victim, GEORGE C. BOWMAN, 47, Tyrone, a mail clerk, died last night.

BOWMAN was pinned in the wreckage for hours before rescue workers extricated him by cutting through the steel mail car with acetylene torches. Although badly injured, he wrote out a will on a sheet of soiled paper and handed it to one of his rescuers to witness.

“I always wanted to make out a will,” he explained, “ but I never got around to it.”

Three of the four crew members in the two engines were killed. The lone survivor was MICHAEL BILLIG, 53, the engineer of the lead engine. He was injured critically.

Among the most seriously injured were two members of a troupe of midgets. SOVENIA RIDDLE, 17, Andover, N. J., one of the midgets, was given a blood transfusion which doctors said saved her life. ADELLA NOWALK, 27, Nanticoke, another midget, also was in critical condition.

Members of JAKEMAN’S family said he was pinned beneath a radiator in a mail car when a train was wrecked near Harrisburg, in January, 1946, and spent several days in a hospital recovering from injuries.

The Gettysburg Times, Gettysburg, PA 19 Feb 1947

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Twenty year old LAWRENCE ENGLISH of Midland, Mich., himself in a hospital with severe cuts and bruises, identified a tattered checked skirt, taken from a mutilated body, as that worn by his bride, of three days, DOROTHY, 22.

Identification of another victim as Mrs. Innocente Brunatti, 60 of Wyandotte, Mich., left only two battered bodies to be recognized. One of the victims was identified merely as MRS. RENNETI, no known address.